Hay in a Haystack?

Being asked to pick one great blog from a list of great blogs was an incredibly difficult request to fulfill. I found myself reading and reading through A LOT of blogs before settling with with one. (Sort of – I did read a few others, but baby steps.) I finally spent a chunk of time on the TeachThought blog.

I found this blog appealing for many reasons, the least of which is the appearance. After living in the web world organizing, laying out and managing site content, this is a big deal to me. There is nothing worse than badly designed navigation and poorly organized content. (And no, that is not redundant – I promise!) And while the site has a fair amount of advertising on board, it is not obtrusive.

With a mission to “learn better”, TeachThough is a blog that purports to evolve learning for 21st century learners. Indeed, with its broad range of topics in education, it is a site with a lot of really great, engaging posts.

I sometimes find it difficult to digest information from experts who are not involved in the daily grind of their field. I can appreciate their knowledge base and their commitment to the cause, but when it comes right down to it, the experts not participating in a daily routine of the field sometimes feel purchased to me, and I just don’t like that. In this case, as a future (and just newly so) teacher, I want all those gory front line details. I want to know the headaches, and what it’s like to manage multiple IEPs in one class. With all that said, another reason I found TeachThought attractive was that it is run by educators, most of whom are still in the field on a daily basis. As a result, not only are the posts engaging, but they are relevant.

The other result of the “who” behind this blog is the extremely valuable and vast resources available on the site. Something that already stresses me out is how I am going to stay current, connected and relevant when I am unleashed in my very own classroom. TeachThought has a great App Market, and awesome glossary of must-know terms, and a brilliant Twitter hashtag list. This is great stuff for those of us not yet in the know.

Of course this wasn’t only blog I read on the day. There were so many great options available, it almost made my head spin. Then I thought, “My ED503 prof wants us to get in the teacher mindset now.” So I did. I looked at the student me and the teacher me said, “This kid looks overwhelmed. Let’s allow this to sink in before we move on.” That’s what I did…but not before bookmarking at least three other phenomenal blogs AND adding a reminder to my calendar to go back and check them out (and maybe write about them too).